Moscow hosts Urbanforum

Evgeny Lavrov says: “Yesterday, the Moscow Urban Forum 2015 was open to everyone: a lot of visitors who took part in many master classes.”

But I wanted to start the story with the Moskva River, the concept of which, according to the developers of the presented project, should become the main one for the entire capital.

According to the project, the main goal of improving the embankments of the Moscow River is to reorient the city towards the river and change its image in the public mind. According to its authors, in order for the river to return to the "Muscovite's mental map" (one would like to say: God! what is this?), it is necessary to consider it as part of urban planning policy. Translated from Russian into Russian, this means that now the Moscow River and its embankments will finally be made a real symbol of the city. Well, this is very, very good.

For example, now the Moscow River will have several types of embankments. These are city parks with access to the river, like Gorky Park, and eco-parks with a natural landscape, like Serebryany Bor. These are car embankments with pedestrian traffic, like Frunzenskaya, as well as “ports of the future” - community centers near the water, where you can get there by car or public transport and spend the evening.

In general, if you characterize the Urbanforum in one word, then it is such a powerful brainstorming session with the participation of the world's leading experts in the development and construction of cities, mayors, architects, representatives of city parliaments from all over the world. But even six or seven years ago, at the word "urban" people climbed into dictionaries to find out what it is!

And if yesterday there really were only experts and journalists here, today ordinary Muscovites have joined the problems of urban studies. Here you can meet people of all ages:

Even the smallest ones had something to do at the forum while their parents were solving difficult problems.

Who knows, maybe this is one of the future great architects.

…which in just a couple of decades will create a fundamentally new concept of Moscow architecture.

In the meantime, things have not come to such creative projects, adults have been solving their own pressing problems.

This year, the focus is on Moscow's internal tasks. These are the reorganization of "sleeping" industrial zones, the creation of new centers of attraction around the Moscow Ring Road, the creation of a park in Zaryadye, the construction of sports facilities for the World Cup, and further improvement.

For example, hiking is now in trend. It was the idea of “transition from the street for a car to the street for a person” that became the main topic of the urban forum. First of all, this concerns paid parking, after their introduction in 2012, people began to use public transport more often, the speed of cars in the center increased, and bike rental increased to a million trips per year.

It is important that the forum focused on the development of the city with the help of residents. People decide what the area will be like. For example, the renaming of Voykovskaya will not take place until a vote is taken on Active Citizen. So now it is not necessary to go to hearings, waste time, you just need your own opinion and the Internet!

The urban forum turned out to be not only and not so much theoretical as practical: they were more looking for ways to solve the problem. But I will tell you more about this tomorrow.

Don't switch! There will be many more interesting things!